The Turn: The Bank of Canada and the Strategic Communications Revolution
| dc.contributor.advisor | Pigeon, Marc-Andre | |
| dc.contributor.committeeMember | Pigeon, Marc-Andre | |
| dc.contributor.committeeMember | Atkinson, Michael | |
| dc.contributor.committeeMember | Eisler, Dale | |
| dc.contributor.committeeMember | Phillips, Peter | |
| dc.creator | Vasylevskyi, Oleksii | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2023-09-14T19:38:09Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2023-09-14T19:38:09Z | |
| dc.date.copyright | 2023 | |
| dc.date.created | 2023-08 | |
| dc.date.issued | 2023-09-14 | |
| dc.date.submitted | August 2023 | |
| dc.date.updated | 2023-09-14T19:38:10Z | |
| dc.description.abstract | Beginning in the 1980s, governments began to embrace practices associated with the New Public Management (NPM) aimed at making government systems more service-oriented, a disposition that typically translated into more external communication. This trend spread to the central banks in developed countries, which began to embrace openness and transparency in the late 1980s and 1990s. A core tenet of NPM is the establishing of clear policy objectives that can anchor public communications. In monetary policy, the clear policy objective became, almost universally, the achievement of a targeted inflation rate. The Bank of Canada was early to embrace this trend. In targeting this objective, the Bank of Canada gradually, over time, established a communication infrastructure that shaped every aspect of the Bank’s outward communication and became seen as integral to attaining its policy goals. Until the unfolding of the COVID-19 crisis, the Bank’s success in achieving its policy target shielded it from critical, political-level scrutiny. In the aftermath, however, the Bank policies and its communications practices have come under tremendous scrutiny politically, in the media, and within academia. To better understand this current debate, I trace how communications, as a monetary policy instrument, evolved at the Bank of Canada along six lines: the formulation of communication policies, changes to the institutional infrastructure, the hiring, training, and deployment of communication personnel, the shifting structure of central bank texts, the use of outside communication consultants, and the application of communications training. I conclude that, from the beginning, the Bank of Canada viewed its strategic communications function as a key monetary policy tool, inseparable from its inflation target objective. From something that did not exist 30 years ago, strategic communication has become an irreplaceable tool and integral part of the Bank’s operations, especially during crises such as the recent Covid-19 pandemic. | |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10388/14986 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.subject | Central Bank communication, expectation management | |
| dc.title | The Turn: The Bank of Canada and the Strategic Communications Revolution | |
| dc.type | Thesis | |
| dc.type.material | text | |
| thesis.degree.department | Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Public Policy | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of Saskatchewan | |
| thesis.degree.level | Masters | |
| thesis.degree.name | Master of Public Policy (M.P.P.) |